The problem is that the music/movie industry's control has been lost largely because of how the internet works and they're using all of their power to regain control. If in 1998-2000 the music industry realized that they didn't need to sell physical media anymore, and passed the savings onto their customers, there would be very little piracy and there would be no need for DRM; the same thing could be said about movies today.
Do you want to know how to make friends, or do you want to make friends?
Do you want to know how to do math, or do you want to do math?
For many people in the world the answer is do math because they have never seen it as being particularly difficult; as an example, until my forth year of mathematics in university I never bought a text book because the material was obvious. As hard as it is for most of us to understand there are millions of people in this world who have difficulty making friends, getting into romantic relationships, and functioning in a work place; by studying how personal relationships are formed, and how people interact, you can figure out a way to help people with their own issues. There is value in this work regardless of whether you see it.
I am an INTJ (and I suspect that although we only represent 1% of the population we're pretty common on Slashdot) and one of the more obvious characteristics of our personality type is an interest in everything... Just a guess though
One thing I would like to see is musical preferences by Myers-Briggs/Jung personality type. I mention this because, although imperfect, I have found that these personality types will give you a lot of information about a person. Someone who is ENFP (typical 'party girl') is mostly only interested in having fun and would likely be really into the pop-music of the day, on the other hand someone who is ISTJ (typical accountant) is probably going to be far more interested in technical perfection and may like Classical or Jazz; the reason musical taste could be important is an ENFP will think that the ISTJ and his music is boring whereas the ISTJ will think that the ENFP's music and lifestyle are pointless.
Seriously, it's just a pyramid scheme that takes advantage of people's unhappiness. The leaders of scientology make bank by brainwashing their followers.
The truth is that this could be said about dozens or organizations and companies. Sit down and watch comercials and see what is actually being said and you will find that most of the time the message is "Your life sucks, but if you buy our product it will become fantastic."
Even if Scientology was a legitimate religion, why is it illegal for someone to interfere with a religion, but it's completely acceptable for religions to interfere with everyone elses lifes.
This is actually a pretty odd question because (I suspect) that if a religion interfered with a person's life (on the scale that would typically be required for a person to get in trouble for having interfered with a religion) the religion would be in serious trouble.
The reality of the matter is that (most) Religions are special interest groups (like PETA and Greenpeace) which are given tax breaks mainly because of the ammount of charitable work they're responsible for.
Scientology, in particular, is not considered a religion everywhere and is only really powerful because they have focused on 'recruting' powerful celebrities (by giving them a much better lifestyle than most people in scientology), and liberal use of the most powerful force in the modern world (lawyers).
I don't care what your industry is, if you see someone start offering the core of what you do for free you're going to become worried. I knew people who were making a decent living doing computer consulting for home users who went out of business because of how many 15 year old neighbours could do most of what they do for free.
Linux and open source software is great, but if you work in software development on projects where there is a public interest you should be afraid.
Why linux is hard to sell is because (for most of its existence) it has been developed by highly technical people for highly technical people...
Most people want something that is simple and easy to use and they have Windows which is simple enough, easy enough to use and is familiar. Linux is improving, and I would say it is almost as simple and easy to use as windows, but it hasn't gotten to the point where anyone can sit down in front of it and feel comfortable.
I understand what you're saying, and I agree to a certain extent, but I must disagree with your assumption that the people who read and comment on Slashdot would not be reasonably accurate on what can (or will) happen in the videogame industry.
Basically, every time you see a story posted about a Game Analyst predicting what will happen you will see hundreds of replys which either generally support the analysis or disagree with it. From what I have seen, if you read the well written comments which include reasonable reasoning you will usually get a far better idea of what will happen than if you read the article. After the price of the PS3 was announced at E3 earlier this year most slashdot users were talking about how difficult the PS3 would be to sell at that price regardless of the technology that was built into it; analysts still believed the PS3 would dominate. Today, analysts are trying to catch up to catch up to where the average slashdot user was 6 months ago.
I love my Wii, but think that people losing weight from playing Wii games is more a sad statement on how out of shape people are then the implicit greatness of the Wii.
This is a shocker, inexpensive systems with lots of reasonable quality games released for them outsell expensive systems with no games...
In general, the number of people who are willing to spend more than $200 on a gaming system is small and the number of people who are willing to spend that much money without (at least) a handful of games they want being readily available is tiny. The PS2 is still attractive to people because you can (essentially) spend $100 on the system, and $20 per game, and have access to more entertainment then you could on your $400 XBox 360 or $500/$600 PS3.
First off, Mathematics is a science and honestly, I really don't see a difference...
Exxon has produced a "bounty" for the same reason that the Clay Instition has produced a "bounty", they want to attract as many competent people to attempt to prove their hypothesis. In both cases the people who have sponsered the "bounty" will be very careful to double (and triple) check the results because easily discredited evidence or a flawed proof are completely useless to them.
Global Warming is a theory which can not be "proven" through experimentation, and the only way to demonstrate that it is valid is to show that there exists no other plausable explaination for the current state of our climate. Currently, there is little focus on producing other plausable explainations and existing inconsistencies (like the correlation between sunspot activity and global temperature) are not being explained in the Global Warming camp; if Exxon is successful at producing a plausable expaination, or forcing the inconsistencies to be addressed, it will either strenghten the Global Warming theory or destroy it (either is actually a good outcome).
Well, I live in Calgary and I only (really) see the PSP or DS on the train...
The train is (insanely) crowded which could be why PSP owners choose to listen to music or watch movies, but I do see DS owners fight with the crowd to play games. There are countless reasons why I could not see games being played with PSP owners, and it doesn't mean that they don't play games, but I suspect the main reason is that a PSP could be brought out to watch videos/listen to music whereas a DS will only be brought out to play games...
Actually, Wii Sims looks to be a lot different then other versions of the Sims... From my very limited understanding, it looks like it is a combination of The Sims and Animal Crossing (trailer) which could be either really good, or really awful.
It is currently a game I am watching both because I think it looks a little interesting, and because I know my Sister in Law and Niece would love it.
Actually, I would suspect that this announcement has more to do with Nintendo's strong showing at E3 2006 than with the current sales rates; it's been years since I was in the industry, but I suspect that many publishing executives saw the 6 hour line-up for the Wii and were shocked about the popularity (which resulted in a level of panic to find ways to support it). EA buying Headgate Studios in December means they were probably looking for months to find an adequate studio, and then spent months working out a deal to buy the studio, so I imagine they started looking in June/July.
I anticipate that, if sales continue in the direction they are currently in, in August or September you will hear of more support heading to the Wii as developers look to minimize damage from supporting an expensive to develop for small userbase system. (This is just a guess though)
I have actually seen lots of people with the PSP, but I take public transit a lot.
In general, I would say that the number of Nintendo DS systems I see compared to the number of PSPs I see is about even; the dramatic difference between the two is that I see the PSP used heavily for watching movies or listening to music and rarely used to play games on (in particular, I think I have seen only a couple of people play a non-emulated game on the PSP).
In order to celebrate mathematics in the new millennium, The Clay Mathematics Institute of Cambridge, Massachusetts (CMI) has named seven Prize Problems. The Scientific Advisory Board of CMI selected these problems, focusing on important classic questions that have resisted solution over the years. The Board of Directors of CMI designated a $7 million prize fund for the solution to these problems, with $1 million allocated to each. During the Millennium Meeting held on May 24, 2000 at the Collège de France, Timothy Gowers presented a lecture entitled The Importance of Mathematics, aimed for the general public, while John Tate and Michael Atiyah spoke on the problems. The CMI invited specialists to formulate each problem.
In a world where some of the best scientific minds can (typically) make more money producing drug which will give you a nice tanned look than solving complicated mathematics problems (or disproving the man-made global warming hypothesis) sometimes you need a greater incentive than "it's the right thing to do".
The truth is that if you attempt to find evidence that man made global warming isn't happening you're going to end up causing yourself endless problems in academic, political and social circles and many people are not going to try because the cost is to large. Any evidence you find will rapidly be used by groups to disprove global warming, every environmental group will attempt to discredit you, and you will likely be mentioned in countless political debates.
In a few years, there's going to be lawsuits by governments against Exxon and their ilk for compensation from the damage that these companies' caused. Kind of like the tobacco lawsuits.
I can see an argument that Exxon and other oil companies have caused damage to the environment when it comes to oil spills (and what not) but when it comes to "Global Warming" the consumer is the one who is at fault. Through public policy, and consumer choices, we could use a small fraction of the energy we use today but we have choosen not to; Exxon was not the company that told you to water-cool your overclocked quad-sli based PC you did it and you're responsible.
Although the anonymous coward choose a foolish group to link to there are lots of intelligent environmentalists who disagree with the current view of "Environmentalism"...
Dr. Patrick Moore, a founding member of Greenpeace, left Greenpeace in 1986 after he saw Greenpeace became more concerned with anti-capitalism and anti-globalization rather than environmental issues. He had this to say on Global Warming recently "most difficult issue facing the scientific community today in terms of being able to actually predict with any kind of accuracy what's going to happen". While acknowledging that the increase of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is caused by human consumption of fossil fuels, he claims that as of 2006 it cannot be fully proven that this is the reason the Earth has been warming since 1980. He stresses that it is scientific evidence, not consensus opinion, that would prove or disprove this relation."
Have you ever worked at Sony? I have. And I call BullCrap on what you say. Sony may have a lot of problems, and a lot of those may be associated with pride. But thats The Japanese Way pride, not hubris. Sony needs to be fixed. Nepotism, favorism (for example japanese products are favored over all else when it comes to buying machine or parts) and the underestimation of the 'Average User' has to be ripped out of Sony Culture. They have many problems but hubris is NOT one of them.
I get the feeling that you don't really understand what hubris is. Hubris is excessive pride (or arogance), what typically determines that your pride is "excessive" is that your pride is causing you problems.
From what I have seen, neither claim is entirely true...
(In Canada) I have noticed that most American cars are negatively compared to their Japaneese counterparts but (between the lower MSRP and constant deals) the American cars sell for about $5,000 less on average; on top of that, if you finance a car most American car manufacturers offer 0% financing compared to ~8% for Japaneese automobile manufacturers. The result is that an American car can end up being $5,000 to $10,000 less expensive than your Japaneese cars which, in my opinion, means that they should not be directly compared for quality.
Sony producing high-quality is hit and miss... Sony usually provides many products that featurewise are close to the top of the pack and they sell them at a priemium but the reliability of their products has been declining quite steadily for the past decade or so. After a long list of problems with Sony products I started buying Samsung, Panasonic and Toshiba products which have (to this point in time) worked flawlessly.
One thing to remember is that the 75% estimate is how many units people anticipate Sony will ship by March 2007...
Currently, the PS3 is not selling particularly well ( JapanNorth America) inspite of being readily available. At the current rate Sony may end up shipping 4.5 Million units but I couldn't see them having sold 4.5 million units.
According to VideoScan, during the first two weeks of January, Blu-ray discs outsold HD DVD by more than a 2:1 margin. It should be noted that the two weeks in question saw only two new high-def disc releases -- both from Blu-ray ('The Covenant' on Jan 2, and 'Crank' on Jan 9).
Even though both movies were awful, and I secretly hope people were buying the discs to smash them in order that no one will ever be forced to watch that crap again, you tend to see a massive spike in movie/book/music sales when a product is released followed by slower sales for the rest of its life. This is (to a certain extent) like comparing the sales of XBox 360 software to PS3 software in Japan over the past 2 weeks when the XBox 360 had The Idolmaster and Gears of War releases and the PS3 had no new software.
As much as people would like to believe that a PS3 price reduction would be about pleasing consumers the reality is that if Sony cared about what the customers thought they would have dropped the price after E3 when everyone said "WTF?"
Right now, somewhere in Sony of America an executive is talking to a third party publisher and is trying to respond to the threat "If the PS3 doesn't start to sell more software we won't release any exclusive games for it!"
As dumb as Sony is they still know that EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Konami, Namco, and Square-Enix had a far greater impact on creating the Playstation brand than Sony ever did; I'm certain that every major third party developer has talked to Sony and brought up the poor sales of their products, the poor sales of the PS3 and the rumored lack of demand for the PS3 and is wondering why they should continue to spend $5,000,000-$10,000,000 per year to continue developing a game exclusively for the PS3. A price drop would be Sony's way of giving into the developers to ensure that they still had exclusive content that the XBox 360 didn't have.
The Wii will help a lot of people and at the same time cause endless problems for others...
Some people have problems making co-ordinated large gestures (like a lot of the Wii's actions) and others will have problems making co-ordinated small gestures (like pressing buttons on a controller); the Wii will probably offer lots of games which are suitable for people with one hand, but offers little for people who have difficulty with providing adequate hand-grip strenght.
The second you start down the 'Accessability' path it becomes an impossible challenge where your only reward is knowing you're doing the right thing. The fact that every game is designed to support "lower resolution graphics" probably benefits those people with vision problems because one of the main "solutions" for people with these types of problems is to get a larger TV; if you design a 480P game to have text which can be read on a 17 inch TV by most people, many people with vision problems can see it on their 60 inch TV.
Slashdot Mirror
"Jack Thompson is overly opinionated, overly impressed with himself, and doesn't know when to STFU."
So in other words he's a lawyer with dreams of becoming a politician?
Certainly profit and freedom can co-exist ...
The problem is that the music/movie industry's control has been lost largely because of how the internet works and they're using all of their power to regain control. If in 1998-2000 the music industry realized that they didn't need to sell physical media anymore, and passed the savings onto their customers, there would be very little piracy and there would be no need for DRM; the same thing could be said about movies today.
Do you want to know how to make friends, or do you want to make friends?
Do you want to know how to do math, or do you want to do math?
For many people in the world the answer is do math because they have never seen it as being particularly difficult; as an example, until my forth year of mathematics in university I never bought a text book because the material was obvious. As hard as it is for most of us to understand there are millions of people in this world who have difficulty making friends, getting into romantic relationships, and functioning in a work place; by studying how personal relationships are formed, and how people interact, you can figure out a way to help people with their own issues. There is value in this work regardless of whether you see it.
As a guess ... INTJ
... Just a guess though
I am an INTJ (and I suspect that although we only represent 1% of the population we're pretty common on Slashdot) and one of the more obvious characteristics of our personality type is an interest in everything
One thing I would like to see is musical preferences by Myers-Briggs/Jung personality type. I mention this because, although imperfect, I have found that these personality types will give you a lot of information about a person. Someone who is ENFP (typical 'party girl') is mostly only interested in having fun and would likely be really into the pop-music of the day, on the other hand someone who is ISTJ (typical accountant) is probably going to be far more interested in technical perfection and may like Classical or Jazz; the reason musical taste could be important is an ENFP will think that the ISTJ and his music is boring whereas the ISTJ will think that the ENFP's music and lifestyle are pointless.
Seriously, it's just a pyramid scheme that takes advantage of people's unhappiness. The leaders of scientology make bank by brainwashing their followers.
The truth is that this could be said about dozens or organizations and companies. Sit down and watch comercials and see what is actually being said and you will find that most of the time the message is "Your life sucks, but if you buy our product it will become fantastic."
Even if Scientology was a legitimate religion, why is it illegal for someone to interfere with a religion, but it's completely acceptable for religions to interfere with everyone elses lifes.
This is actually a pretty odd question because (I suspect) that if a religion interfered with a person's life (on the scale that would typically be required for a person to get in trouble for having interfered with a religion) the religion would be in serious trouble.
The reality of the matter is that (most) Religions are special interest groups (like PETA and Greenpeace) which are given tax breaks mainly because of the ammount of charitable work they're responsible for.
Scientology, in particular, is not considered a religion everywhere and is only really powerful because they have focused on 'recruting' powerful celebrities (by giving them a much better lifestyle than most people in scientology), and liberal use of the most powerful force in the modern world (lawyers).
I don't care what your industry is, if you see someone start offering the core of what you do for free you're going to become worried. I knew people who were making a decent living doing computer consulting for home users who went out of business because of how many 15 year old neighbours could do most of what they do for free.
Linux and open source software is great, but if you work in software development on projects where there is a public interest you should be afraid.
Why linux is hard to sell is because (for most of its existence) it has been developed by highly technical people for highly technical people ...
...
Most people want something that is simple and easy to use and they have Windows which is simple enough, easy enough to use and is familiar. Linux is improving, and I would say it is almost as simple and easy to use as windows, but it hasn't gotten to the point where anyone can sit down in front of it and feel comfortable.
I admit, I could be wrong though
I understand what you're saying, and I agree to a certain extent, but I must disagree with your assumption that the people who read and comment on Slashdot would not be reasonably accurate on what can (or will) happen in the videogame industry.
Basically, every time you see a story posted about a Game Analyst predicting what will happen you will see hundreds of replys which either generally support the analysis or disagree with it. From what I have seen, if you read the well written comments which include reasonable reasoning you will usually get a far better idea of what will happen than if you read the article. After the price of the PS3 was announced at E3 earlier this year most slashdot users were talking about how difficult the PS3 would be to sell at that price regardless of the technology that was built into it; analysts still believed the PS3 would dominate. Today, analysts are trying to catch up to catch up to where the average slashdot user was 6 months ago.
I love my Wii, but think that people losing weight from playing Wii games is more a sad statement on how out of shape people are then the implicit greatness of the Wii.
This is a shocker, inexpensive systems with lots of reasonable quality games released for them outsell expensive systems with no games ...
In general, the number of people who are willing to spend more than $200 on a gaming system is small and the number of people who are willing to spend that much money without (at least) a handful of games they want being readily available is tiny. The PS2 is still attractive to people because you can (essentially) spend $100 on the system, and $20 per game, and have access to more entertainment then you could on your $400 XBox 360 or $500/$600 PS3.
First off, Mathematics is a science and honestly, I really don't see a difference ...
Exxon has produced a "bounty" for the same reason that the Clay Instition has produced a "bounty", they want to attract as many competent people to attempt to prove their hypothesis. In both cases the people who have sponsered the "bounty" will be very careful to double (and triple) check the results because easily discredited evidence or a flawed proof are completely useless to them.
Global Warming is a theory which can not be "proven" through experimentation, and the only way to demonstrate that it is valid is to show that there exists no other plausable explaination for the current state of our climate. Currently, there is little focus on producing other plausable explainations and existing inconsistencies (like the correlation between sunspot activity and global temperature) are not being explained in the Global Warming camp; if Exxon is successful at producing a plausable expaination, or forcing the inconsistencies to be addressed, it will either strenghten the Global Warming theory or destroy it (either is actually a good outcome).
Well, I live in Calgary and I only (really) see the PSP or DS on the train ...
...
The train is (insanely) crowded which could be why PSP owners choose to listen to music or watch movies, but I do see DS owners fight with the crowd to play games. There are countless reasons why I could not see games being played with PSP owners, and it doesn't mean that they don't play games, but I suspect the main reason is that a PSP could be brought out to watch videos/listen to music whereas a DS will only be brought out to play games
Actually, Wii Sims looks to be a lot different then other versions of the Sims ... From my very limited understanding, it looks like it is a combination of The Sims and Animal Crossing (trailer) which could be either really good, or really awful.
It is currently a game I am watching both because I think it looks a little interesting, and because I know my Sister in Law and Niece would love it.
Actually, I would suspect that this announcement has more to do with Nintendo's strong showing at E3 2006 than with the current sales rates; it's been years since I was in the industry, but I suspect that many publishing executives saw the 6 hour line-up for the Wii and were shocked about the popularity (which resulted in a level of panic to find ways to support it). EA buying Headgate Studios in December means they were probably looking for months to find an adequate studio, and then spent months working out a deal to buy the studio, so I imagine they started looking in June/July.
I anticipate that, if sales continue in the direction they are currently in, in August or September you will hear of more support heading to the Wii as developers look to minimize damage from supporting an expensive to develop for small userbase system. (This is just a guess though)
I have actually seen lots of people with the PSP, but I take public transit a lot.
In general, I would say that the number of Nintendo DS systems I see compared to the number of PSPs I see is about even; the dramatic difference between the two is that I see the PSP used heavily for watching movies or listening to music and rarely used to play games on (in particular, I think I have seen only a couple of people play a non-emulated game on the PSP).
In order to celebrate mathematics in the new millennium, The Clay Mathematics Institute of Cambridge, Massachusetts (CMI) has named seven Prize Problems. The Scientific Advisory Board of CMI selected these problems, focusing on important classic questions that have resisted solution over the years. The Board of Directors of CMI designated a $7 million prize fund for the solution to these problems, with $1 million allocated to each. During the Millennium Meeting held on May 24, 2000 at the Collège de France, Timothy Gowers presented a lecture entitled The Importance of Mathematics, aimed for the general public, while John Tate and Michael Atiyah spoke on the problems. The CMI invited specialists to formulate each problem.
link
In a world where some of the best scientific minds can (typically) make more money producing drug which will give you a nice tanned look than solving complicated mathematics problems (or disproving the man-made global warming hypothesis) sometimes you need a greater incentive than "it's the right thing to do".
The truth is that if you attempt to find evidence that man made global warming isn't happening you're going to end up causing yourself endless problems in academic, political and social circles and many people are not going to try because the cost is to large. Any evidence you find will rapidly be used by groups to disprove global warming, every environmental group will attempt to discredit you, and you will likely be mentioned in countless political debates.
In a few years, there's going to be lawsuits by governments against Exxon and their ilk for compensation from the damage that these companies' caused. Kind of like the tobacco lawsuits.
I can see an argument that Exxon and other oil companies have caused damage to the environment when it comes to oil spills (and what not) but when it comes to "Global Warming" the consumer is the one who is at fault. Through public policy, and consumer choices, we could use a small fraction of the energy we use today but we have choosen not to; Exxon was not the company that told you to water-cool your overclocked quad-sli based PC you did it and you're responsible.
Although the anonymous coward choose a foolish group to link to there are lots of intelligent environmentalists who disagree with the current view of "Environmentalism"...
Dr. Patrick Moore, a founding member of Greenpeace, left Greenpeace in 1986 after he saw Greenpeace became more concerned with anti-capitalism and anti-globalization rather than environmental issues. He had this to say on Global Warming recently "most difficult issue facing the scientific community today in terms of being able to actually predict with any kind of accuracy what's going to happen". While acknowledging that the increase of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is caused by human consumption of fossil fuels, he claims that as of 2006 it cannot be fully proven that this is the reason the Earth has been warming since 1980. He stresses that it is scientific evidence, not consensus opinion, that would prove or disprove this relation."
link
Have you ever worked at Sony? I have. And I call BullCrap on what you say. Sony may have a lot of problems, and a lot of those may be associated with pride. But thats The Japanese Way pride, not hubris. Sony needs to be fixed. Nepotism, favorism (for example japanese products are favored over all else when it comes to buying machine or parts) and the underestimation of the 'Average User' has to be ripped out of Sony Culture. They have many problems but hubris is NOT one of them.
I get the feeling that you don't really understand what hubris is. Hubris is excessive pride (or arogance), what typically determines that your pride is "excessive" is that your pride is causing you problems.
From what I have seen, neither claim is entirely true ...
... Sony usually provides many products that featurewise are close to the top of the pack and they sell them at a priemium but the reliability of their products has been declining quite steadily for the past decade or so. After a long list of problems with Sony products I started buying Samsung, Panasonic and Toshiba products which have (to this point in time) worked flawlessly.
(In Canada) I have noticed that most American cars are negatively compared to their Japaneese counterparts but (between the lower MSRP and constant deals) the American cars sell for about $5,000 less on average; on top of that, if you finance a car most American car manufacturers offer 0% financing compared to ~8% for Japaneese automobile manufacturers. The result is that an American car can end up being $5,000 to $10,000 less expensive than your Japaneese cars which, in my opinion, means that they should not be directly compared for quality.
Sony producing high-quality is hit and miss
One thing to remember is that the 75% estimate is how many units people anticipate Sony will ship by March 2007 ...
Currently, the PS3 is not selling particularly well ( Japan North America) inspite of being readily available. At the current rate Sony may end up shipping 4.5 Million units but I couldn't see them having sold 4.5 million units.
According to VideoScan, during the first two weeks of January, Blu-ray discs outsold HD DVD by more than a 2:1 margin. It should be noted that the two weeks in question saw only two new high-def disc releases -- both from Blu-ray ('The Covenant' on Jan 2, and 'Crank' on Jan 9).
Even though both movies were awful, and I secretly hope people were buying the discs to smash them in order that no one will ever be forced to watch that crap again, you tend to see a massive spike in movie/book/music sales when a product is released followed by slower sales for the rest of its life. This is (to a certain extent) like comparing the sales of XBox 360 software to PS3 software in Japan over the past 2 weeks when the XBox 360 had The Idolmaster and Gears of War releases and the PS3 had no new software.
As much as people would like to believe that a PS3 price reduction would be about pleasing consumers the reality is that if Sony cared about what the customers thought they would have dropped the price after E3 when everyone said "WTF?"
Right now, somewhere in Sony of America an executive is talking to a third party publisher and is trying to respond to the threat "If the PS3 doesn't start to sell more software we won't release any exclusive games for it!"
As dumb as Sony is they still know that EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Konami, Namco, and Square-Enix had a far greater impact on creating the Playstation brand than Sony ever did; I'm certain that every major third party developer has talked to Sony and brought up the poor sales of their products, the poor sales of the PS3 and the rumored lack of demand for the PS3 and is wondering why they should continue to spend $5,000,000-$10,000,000 per year to continue developing a game exclusively for the PS3. A price drop would be Sony's way of giving into the developers to ensure that they still had exclusive content that the XBox 360 didn't have.
The Wii will help a lot of people and at the same time cause endless problems for others ...
Some people have problems making co-ordinated large gestures (like a lot of the Wii's actions) and others will have problems making co-ordinated small gestures (like pressing buttons on a controller); the Wii will probably offer lots of games which are suitable for people with one hand, but offers little for people who have difficulty with providing adequate hand-grip strenght.
The second you start down the 'Accessability' path it becomes an impossible challenge where your only reward is knowing you're doing the right thing. The fact that every game is designed to support "lower resolution graphics" probably benefits those people with vision problems because one of the main "solutions" for people with these types of problems is to get a larger TV; if you design a 480P game to have text which can be read on a 17 inch TV by most people, many people with vision problems can see it on their 60 inch TV.